It is as if the foreign press in recent weeks are reporting on a completely different election than the one the Dutch are facing. Unlike the journalists streaming in the country that co-founded the EU, most citizens heading to the polling stations on Wednesday are not obsessed by far-right leader Geert Wilders. Recent articles in…

The 1987 Intifada and the Arab Uprising are remarkably similar: grassroots movements consisting of local networks with the single unifying interest to challenge systematic injustice. Indeed, the Palestians – and many of their Arab brothers in Egypt, Syria and beyond – may have failed to achieve a more just world, but their cause is far from…

This week I attended a seminar organised by the general Dutch Security and Intelligence Agency (AIVD). The agency is the equivalent of Mi5 and Mi6 combined and, unsurprisingly, largely focusses on countering ISIS and other jihadist groups. As the issues discussed during the day were quite broad, I thought it would be interesting to reflect…

First and foremost, the image of the #Syrianboy who survived a bombardment in Aleppo is emblematic for the human catastrophe of the civil war in Syria – akin Alan Kurdi, the three-year-old who drowned in the Mediterranean last year. But the image of five-year-old Omran Daqneesh has also revived the debate how audiences across the…

I am very excited that our book on Big Data Challenges is now published. This volume brings together an impressive range of academic and intelligence professional perspectives to interrogate the social, ethical and security upheavals in a world increasingly driven by data. Written in a clear and accessible style, it offers fresh insights to the deep…

Jamestown Foundation: Terrorism Monitor Volume: 13 Issue: 19 In December 2014, a video testament emerged in which 19-year-old Sultan Berzel, from the Netherlands’ southern city of Maastricht, called on Muslims to make hijra (a religious migration) to the self-proclaimed Islamic State group. He delivered his message in a quiet voice and with a local Maastricht accent. The…

Riyadh Mohammed interviewed me for the The Fiscal Times and Yahoo. His piece discusses the recent successes by ISIS in the city of Ramadi. Almost a year after the fall of Mosul, Iraq’s second largest city, ISIS has captured Ramadi, the capital of Iraq’s largest province, Anbar, where 1,300 American soldiers and Marines died during…

In this interview, Tim Goudriaan and I discuss Palestinian ICC Membership from a political perspective. We touch on the reasons for the Palestinians to join the ICC; the relationships between Fatah and Hamas on the issue; the effects for Palestinians on the local level; and offers expectations on how the situation may evolve in the…